Agape Blitz!

Agape Blitz is an event we do as a church community once a year to love our city. It is a physical expression of love for our city. This year Elissa and I were in charge of the Blitz projects. It was very draining to organize everything, but we are very happy at the way that God worked through the projects this year. I spent many hours advertising the event, helping people to sign up, and helping our 5 people organize their different projects. We had 5 projects happening this year: 1. Picking up trash and clearing out a large area of brush around Lincoln High School (where we worship). 2. Graffiti clean-up in the area surrounding Lincoln High School. 3. Yard work/repairs for the area around our office (a house on the old Cascade College campus). 4. Yard/House work for an injured elderly woman who works with hospice patients. 5. Singing group at a retirement home.

We had about 60 people in total come. Elissa and I both went to the high school to beautify the area. It was exciting to see who showed up. We had about 30 people there. Two of them were Elissa's friends from high school who have fallen away from the church. Matt works at a Safeway in NE Portland and Josh joined the military. We recently connected with a college student (Heather) at Portland State who has only been to a church once in her life with her grandmother, and was very turned off by the event. She invited us to her birthday party last Friday (Elissa went, but I had to work at the bike shop). She came to the Blitz project on Saturday, and seems open to the idea of church. Elissa invited her to church, and I invited her to come to one of my group bible studies.

Another cool story that came out of the Blitz this year was from those who led the different projects. Louie and Dustin are both guys in our recovery groups and were formerly homeless. Louie led the group doing the graffiti clean-up project, while Dustin led the group cleaning up around our office. These guys did a great job of organizing people and getting things they needed together. It is cool to see our core values as a church (Agape Love, Relationship, and Empowerment) defining who we are and being an integral part of everything we do. We loved our city this week, created many relationships because of it, and helped to empower people to step up and help in the many aspects of the projects going on. God is so good and continues to shape our church, campus ministry, and us.

-Marc

p.s. - This blog is intended to help people see what we are doing as we work with our church at Agape. I will do my best to keep the blog posts coming once a week. Pictures will be added later... as soon as I can collect them from our camera people!